But she asked over her shoulder, with great interest, if Helen had passed a pleasant summer.  She thought she had never seen her looking so well.  Helen thought Miss Cavendish herself was looking very well also, but Marion said no; that she was too sunburnt, she would not be able to wear a dinner-dress for a month.  There was a pause while Marion’s quill scratched violently across Carroll’s note-paper.  Helen felt that in some way she was being treated as an intruder; or worse, as a guest.  She did not sit down, it seemed impossible to do so, but she moved uncertainly about the room.  She noted that there were many changes, it seemed more bare and empty; her picture was still on the writing-desk, but there were at least six new photographs of Marion.  Marion herself had brought them to the room that morning, and had carefully arranged them in conspicuous places.  But Helen could not know that.  She thought there was an unnecessary amount of writing scribbled over the face of each.

Marion addressed her letter and wrote “Immediate” across the envelope, and placed it before the clock on the mantel-shelf.  “You will find Philip looking very badly,” she said, as she pulled on her gloves.  “He has been in town all summer, working very hard—­he has had no holiday at all.  I don’t think he’s well.  I have been a great deal worried about him,” she added.  Her face was bent over the buttons of her glove, and when she raised her blue eyes to Helen they were filled with serious concern.

“Really,” Helen stammered, “I—­I didn’t know—­in his letters he seemed very cheerful.”

Marion shook her head and turned and stood looking thoughtfully out of the window.  “He’s in a very hard place,” she began, abruptly, and then stopped as though she had thought better of what she intended to say.  Helen tried to ask her to go on, but could not bring herself to do so.  She wanted to get away.

“I tell him he ought to leave London,” Marion began again; “he needs a change and a rest.”

“I should think he might,” Helen agreed, “after three months of this heat.  He wrote me he intended going to Herne Bay or over to Ostend.”

“Yes, he had meant to go,” Marion answered.  She spoke with the air of one who possessed the most intimate knowledge of Carroll’s movements and plans, and change of plans.  “But he couldn’t,” she added.  “He couldn’t afford it.  Helen,” she said, turning to the other girl, dramatically, “do you know—­I believe that Philip is very poor.”

Miss Cabot exclaimed, incredulously, “Poor!” She laughed.  “Why, what do you mean?”

“I mean that he has no money,” Marion answered, sharply.  “These rooms represent nothing.  He only keeps them on because he paid for them in advance.  He’s been living on three shillings a day.  That’s poor for him.  He takes his meals at cabmen’s shelters and at Lockhart’s, and he’s been doing so for a month.”

Helen recalled with a guilty thrill the receipt of certain boxes of La France roses—­cut long, in the American fashion—­which had arrived within the last month at various country-houses.  She felt indignant at herself, and miserable.  Her indignation was largely due to the recollection that she had given these flowers to her hostess to decorate the dinner-table.